Ronald Reagan and Redress for Japanese-American Internment,
1983-88

by Timothy P. Maga
Oglesby
Professor of American Heritage,
Bradley University

Blood that has soaked into the sand of a beach is all
one color. America stands unique in the world, the only country not
founded on race, but on a way, an ideal.1

Captain Ronald Reagan, December 1945

In 1984, shortly before his landslide reelection victory over former
Vice President Walter Mondale, President Ronald Reagan was faced with
an intense lobbying effort by Japanese Americans and their
allies in
Congress. At issue was the moral, legal, and economic redress of the
forced evacuation, relocation, and internment of Japanese Americans
during World War II. To most Americans in the 1980s, Franklin
Roosevelt's internment decision of forty years earlier was considered
"an American tragedy."2 For nearly five years, President
Reagan
opposed redress legislation, reversing his position only after the
political pressure reached a fever pitch during the waning days of his
second term and at the height of the Bush-Dukakis presidential
campaign. This article examines Reagan's reasoning in the matter,
the
worthiness of the redress legislation itself, and the significance of
Reagan's reversal.

Be it through the written word, documentary films, or both, most
Americans are familiar, or should be, with the sad tale of wartime
Japanese-American internment. The postwar Japanese-American effort to
win redress, and its high point of the 1980s, is not that well
known.3 Without question, the internment story continues to
stimulate a variety of emotions. They vary from rage and revenge to
withdrawal and escapism. The campaign to win redress from the U.S.
federal government was not immune from these conflicting emotions.
Indeed, the "you owe me" argument was difficult to organize into a
unified coalition that hoped to win on all fronts (moral, political,
legal, and economic).

Given these emotions and struggles, the most hopeful venue for those
who desired any form of redress was always the courts. Divorced
(theoretically) from the political battles that beset a legislature,
the courts held out, to some, the promise of a binding, no-nonsense
resolution. Hence, the legal challenge came first. When that fight
brought mixed results, the political agitation phase of the redress
effort truly began. This political venue was particularly obvious in
the area of congressional influence and clout. From Japanese-American
Congressmen (such as the California Democrats Norman Mineta and
Robert
Matsui) to sympathetic African-American Congressmen such as Mervyn
Dymally (D) (who represented one of Los Angeles's largest
Japanese-American populations in the 1980s), the Japanese-American
community could count on tireless congressional allies. Yet, how
enforceable was the redress legislation that they proposed? President
Reagan had his doubts. He also saw conflicts with the then very
delicate U.S.-Japan relationship. In the name of national security, he
could never fully explain to Congress or his Japanese-American critics
what those conflicts were.

Thanks to the 1996-97 declassification of documents at the Ronald
Reagan Library, the redress battle can now be thoroughly analyzed.4
Without a doubt, the cause for redress was a well-intentioned one
and, in its legal form alone, quite overdue. Stripped of emotion, the
legal case for redress was rooted in a fundamental American principle:
the victims of injury and injustice deserve compensation that is
meaningful and proportional to their suffering. More than 120,000
Americans of Japanese ancestry were forced from their homes in 1942 and
herded at gunpoint into barbed-wire compounds that were located in
deserts and swamps. They were all either American citizens or resident
aliens who had been lawfully admitted but were barred from citizenship
by discriminatory laws. Not one had been charged with a crime, given
the right to counsel, or provided a chance to establish his or her
loyalty to the United States. These victims of wartime hysteria spent
an average of 900 days in captivity, held as retribution for the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. To all but a few of their fellow
citizens, Americans of Japanese ancestry were faceless and nameless.
The military official who recommended their internment, General John L.
DeWitt, put a common prejudice into ugly words: "A Jap's a Jap."
American birth and citizenship could not dilute the "racial strains"
that united all members of this "enemy race," DeWitt claimed. He even
adopted the worst features of the politics of America's wartime
adversaries: "There isn't such a thing as a loyal Japanese and it's
just impossible to determine their loyalty by investigation."5
Stripped of their names and faces and subject to injustice and
indignity, DeWitt's internees (or "wards," as he preferred) were
reduced to simple wartime stereotypes.

One of those "wards," Fred Korematsu, entered the legal history
books
in a landmark case that challenged internment and during the internment
era itself. Korematsu's defeat in this case would serve as the
foundation for the postwar legal redress effort, but only after
Korematsu decided to resume the effort after years of trying to forget
it. In short, Korematsu had challenged the military curfew and
exclusion orders that preceded the internment program. Along with Gordon
Hirabayashi and Minoru "Min" Yasui,
Korematsu was convicted of a
criminal offense and had pressed his case all the way to the Supreme
Court (which upheld his conviction in 1944). The year before, in
affirming the convictions of Hirabayashi and Yasui, the Court adopted
the FDR administration's thesis of "racial disloyalty." The Court also
accepted without inquiry the government's claim that "military
necessity" required the challenged curfew and the orders to protect the
West Coast against sabotage and espionage.6

These decisions did not sit well with some in the American legal
profession. In late 1945, less than one year after Korematsu's
conviction, Eugene Rostow of the Yale Law School, for instance,
lambasted the Supreme Court's actions. The Court, he said, had caved in
to racial stereotypes and bowed to military arguments. Consequently,
the justices had "abdicated their responsibilities." Rostow insisted
that "the basic issues should be presented to the Supreme Court again,
in an effort to obtain a reversal of these wartime cases."7
It
would take forty years.

Throughout these four decades, the Supreme Court successfully attacked
racial segregation in public schools, the civil rights movement
championed and won many battles for racial equality, and Congress
responded with acts to protect everything from voting privilege to
equal employment. Finally, Japanese Americans awakened from what has
been called their "silent years" and, during the 1970s,
advocated the creation of a congressionally mandated commission
that would
seek the
proper path to redress.

As the 1970s champion of post-Vietnam, post-Watergate "open
government," the always candid President Jimmy Carter said he
welcomed
the Japanese-American cause. Near the end of his term and while
fighting a losing battle for his political life against the advancing
campaign of former California Governor Ronald Reagan, Carter
established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of
Civilians (CWRIC). But it would be the Reagan administration that
inherited its work and recommendations, and that fact, in itself, would
soon be a problem for the redress cause. President Reagan told his
cabinet that he had little use for "left-over Carterisms like the
CWRIC," for his Reagan Revolution was supposed to be an obvious
alternative to Carter's so-called liberalism.8

Between late 1980 and 1983, the CWRIC held hearings in which 750
witnesses appeared, including internment camp survivors and their
former wardens. One of those witnesses, for example, was FDR's former
Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, who under intense
examination by Judge William Marutani, the only commissioner of
Japanese ancestry and himself a camp survivor, shouted that the
internment had been justified because of the "Jap sneak attack on Pearl
Harbor." Nevertheless, beyond the drama of public testimony, the
CWRIC's greatest endeavor involved the difficult task of examining old
War Department, FBI, and military records in reference to internment.
Largely based on this research, the CWRIC made its recommendations
to
the Reagan administration on the eve of the 1984 election.

First, the commissioners agreed without dissent that Japanese Americans
had been victims of the "misconduct of justice," stimulated by "race
prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership."
Franklin Roosevelt, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, McCloy, and the
entire American government system were indicted in the commission's
final report. Whereas some members of Congress offered encouragement to
the commission's work, the federal courts still suggested the best
course of redress. The reason behind this suggestion involved the
CWRIC's 1981 discovery that Justice Department officials, during the
days of the original Korematsu case, had deliberately suppressed
evidence, lied to Korematsu case investigators, and intentionally
misled the Court about alleged Japanese-American security threats.

The damning documentation of this conduct stretched across the case
records of 1943 and 1944. This evidence had been unavailable to
critics, such as Yale's Rostow, at the end of the war, ensuring that
the case would not be reopened anytime soon. Consequently, the aging
Fred Korematsu, along with codefendents Min Yasui and Gordon
Hirabayashi, revived their case thanks to a team of volunteer
lawyers
(most of whom were Hirabayashi, Yasui, and Korematsu grandchildren and
relatives). In late 1983, legal petitions were filed in the same
locations as the case of forty years earlier (i.e., San Francisco,
Portland, and Seattle). The government's own records refuted the
Pentagon's military necessity argument for internment, including the
charge that Japanese Americans had been preparing for acts of sabotage
to U.S. military installations on the West Coast.9

When the new case began, more than 300 spectators, most of them elderly
survivors of internment, packed Judge Marilyn Hall Patel's courtroom in
San Francisco. The government's lawyer, Victor Stone, admitted that
internment had been "an unfortunate episode" but refused to admit
"legal misconduct." The case dragged on for nearly a year. Quite a few
tearful tales were told about the dark days of internment, while the
government refused to budge from its position of "no misconduct." But
in April 1984, Judge Patel had heard enough.

I find substantial support in the record that the
government
deliberately omitted relevant information and provided misleading
information to the Supreme Court on the crucial military necessity
issue. The judicial process is seriously impaired when the government's
law enforcement officers violate their ethical obligations to the
court. Although I can not wipe the Supreme Court opinion from the
books, it stands as a constant caution that in times of war or declared
military necessity our institutions must be vigilant in protecting
constitutional guarantees and protecting all citizens from the petty
fears and prejudices that are so easily aroused.10

In Portland, Min Yasui had his criminal convictions erased, and in
Seattle, Gordon Hirabayashi was cleared as well. Nevertheless,
Hirabayashi had to endure the most scrutiny by government lawyers, and
the presiding judge, Donald Voorhees, permitted it. Dozens of witnesses
were brought to the Seattle trial to testify that the FDR
administration had more than enough reason to doubt Japanese-American
loyalty at the beginning of World War II. Formerly top-secret cables
from the War Department's Operation MAGIC decoding/counterintelligence
operation were introduced, and former American espionage agents
testified about Tokyo spies in the Japanese-American community. Yet,
Hirabayashi's lawyers demonstrated that the Operation MAGIC cables were
quite interpretive, and the former espionage agents could not identify
or name the alleged Tokyo spies and their contacts.

Although many Japanese Americans found the Hirabayashi trial an
unnecessarily long exercise, if not outright cruel to the elderly
Hirabayashi, Judge Voorhees, in the end, offered one of the more
intriguing posttrial challenges to the American political community. "The
internment of an entire ethnic minority," he said, "on
the basis
of such deceit, disregard, and fraud requires more than an apology."
He
urged the Reagan administration to "make up for the misery of the early
1940s."11

The Voorhees pronouncement became a call to arms to Hirabayashi and his
supporters. According to Hirabayashi, his specific trial and the entire
case of Hirabayashi-Korematsu-Yasui had not been truly resolved. The
clearing of a personal criminal record was not good enough. The Court,
he believed, should have taken the next step or, at least, empowered
Congress to make that next step. The federal government's "significant
financial restitution" to former internees, along with Washington's
formal apology to them and the nation, constituted those steps.

Indeed, to Hirabayashi's lawyers, the case for monetary compensation
derived from the legal and moral principle that American law "make
whole" the victims of injury in a meaningful way and at the cost of
those who inflicted the injury or bear its responsibility. This was not
without recent precedent. And how much compensation was enough? In
1971, some 1,200 peaceful demonstrators had gathered on the U.S.
Capitol steps to listen to members of Congress who opposed the Vietnam
War. The demonstrators were unlawfully arrested and held without
charges for up to two days. In 1975, each person received a $10,000
award for the violation of their constitutional rights and unlawful
detention.

Given this precedent, the Hirabayashi family concluded that $20 per
day
to Japanese Americans for each day of internment (totaling to $20,000)
would be a "modest request." Sadly, from their view, the Court had not
even considered a modest request. To Gordon Hirabayashi, "the evidence
was clear that Americans had inflicted a grave injustice on an entire
group of fellow Americans." Calling for "national fairness and
repentance" in the form of a Reagan administration apology, a $20,000
stipend, and the blanket clearing of any and all Japanese-American
criminal records from the internment era, Hirabayashi offered a
grand
motto to the energized political phase of the redress effort. "Ancestry,"
he said, "is not a crime."12

The CWRIC shared Hirabayashi's ambitions, adding teeth to the call for
"fairness and repentance." Together, the CWRIC's final report to
Congress and the conclusion of the court case constituted a powerful
argument for legislative action. The result was H.R. 442. This
legislation was deliberately numbered in honor of the 442d
"Go-for-Broke" regiment of Japanese Americans who emerged from World
War II as the army's most highly decorated unit. Echoing, although not
perfectly, the Hirabayashi family, H.R. 442 called for a U.S.
government apology, a $1.5 billion trust fund, a $20,000 stipend to
each internee, a review of criminal convictions associated with the
refusal to comply with internment procedures, and possible pardons.

President Reagan's response was negative, at first complaining
to his
staff about the "bad timing" of the legislation. By bad timing, he was
referring to the 1984 election, his accomplishments on behalf of fiscal
conservatism, and his call for a balanced budget and a line-item veto.

Establishing a $1.5 billion trust fund in this matter saddled him with
the sins of his Democratic predecessors, from Franklin Roosevelt who
interned the Japanese to Jimmy Carter who established the CWRIC.
Forever railing against the "big-spending liberals" of the Democratic
Party, Reagan worried that his fast approval of H.R. 442 (sponsored by
a bipartisan group of 166 House members) might put him in the same
category as the reviled big spenders. This political contradiction to
his presidential career could be easily avoided through opposition to
H.R. 442.13

But Reagan's opposition to H.R. 442 went beyond matters of fiscal
conservatism and political purity. Upon further study of the issue, he
found much of H.R. 442 already duplicated in law. For instance,
during
1976, President Gerald Ford, in a certain bicentennial spirit of
goodwill, issued a proclamation officially terminating the executive
order that led to the relocation and internment of the Japanese
Americans. To Reagan, that was good enough, although he asked his staff
to "come up with something" that might please the Japanese-American
community "beyond restitution payments."14 As governor
of
California, and then as the 1980 Republican nominee for president,
Reagan had enjoyed significant support from the Japanese-American
community. Naturally, he did not want to lose those supporters.15
But as the easy 1984 victory over Mondale came and went, the
president's opposition to redress grew rather than lessened.

The strategies of the Reagan opposition ranged from attacks on the
legislation's viability to doubts of congressional competence. Hence,
Congress was assaulted for trying to break the budget with a new form
of "pork" legislation. Specifically, the attorney general's
office also
opposed pardons for certain criminal convictions, and the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) said the restitution arrangements were
"vaguely worded and its effect uncertain." The OMB reported to Reagan
that the House-proposed trust fund, in reality, would cost the
taxpayer
much more. Meanwhile, the American-Japanese Evacuation Claims Act
of
1948, claimed the OMB, had provided "meager and selective" restitution
to some internees, but the point was that the government had responded.
The federal government had no further obligations in this matter.
Congress's action, both the OMB and Attorney General Edwin Meese III
agreed, "could establish a bad precedent for other groups who
feel that
they have suffered injustices." The courts, they concluded, had already
addressed "the hard issues" in reference to all internment matters.

Joseph Wright, the deputy director of the OMB, once told Reagan that
Congress had even "demonstrated its incompetence with the
redress
legislation through its dangerously vague rhetoric" in H.R. 442
and lack of "homework." By lack of homework, Wright was
referring to the
fact that H.R. 442 did not reference the 1948 American-Japanese
Evacuation Claims Act and the early 1980s court results. Reagan
agreed
with the Wright assessment. Nevertheless, the president had little
to
say to the press about the redress legislation, and his discussions
with Wright and Meese were kept confidential.16

Whereas Congress and the Japanese-American community could speculate
about the Reagan administration's domestic policy reasons to oppose
H.R. 442, they had little knowledge of Reagan's national security
concerns. Upon the introduction of H.R. 442, the Japanese
government of
Yasuhiro Nakasone criticized the Reagan administration for not passing
it immediately. Implying that H.R. 442's quick approval by the
White
House would also benefit harmonious U.S.-Japan relations, Nakasone also
noted that soon-to-be revised Japanese high school history texts were
now going to address the Japanese-American internment issue. Would it
not be a "fine footnote to America's black page," he surmised, if those
new books could also proclaim the Reagan administration's apology
for
this ugly chapter of the World War II past?

To Craig Fuller, a special assistant to the president on issues ranging
from Japanese affairs to international education, the Nakasone reaction
to H.R. 442 constituted a back-handed slap to American pride and honor.
Given the recent history of Japanese militarism and aggression,
including horrific war crimes, Japan had no right to preach moral
policy to the United States, Fuller explained to Reagan. Fuller
also
believed that Nakasone's mentioning of U.S.-Japan relations in his H.R.
442 statements was "dirty pool." Somehow, the Reagan administration's
approval of H.R. 442 would be seen in Tokyo, Fuller reasoned, as a
rejection of "Japan bashing," which the Japanese government believed
was ever present in ongoing trade and defense negotiations.

Reagan agreed with Fuller, insisting that "some measure had to
be made"
to inform Tokyo that the White House "did not make legislation at the
whim of the Japanese Diet."17

This top-secret Reagan position was not a typical one. Publicly, his
administration considered the proliferation of Japanese corporations
setting up shop in 1980s America as "good for the economy," while the
booming success of Japanese electronic and automobile products within
the United States was seen as "good for the American competitive
spirit."18

Hence, outwardly, the Reagan administration was a friend to Japanese
policy and in spite of Democratic Party and labor union complaints.
Privately, at least in the case of H.R. 442, Reagan saw a Japanese
insult to the integrity of the American government.

President Reagan won the opportunity to inform a senior visiting
Japanese politician of this concern. Yoshiro Mori, Japan's Minister of
Education, came to Washington, DC, shortly after Nakasone made his H.R.
442 statements. The purpose of the visit was to sign a math and science
educational exchange program agreement between Japan and the United
States. Reagan asked for "deep background" on Mori from both Fuller and
the National Security Council (NSC). According to the president's
sources, Mori was a "nationalist" and "ruthless tactician" for Japan's
ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Positioned to replace Nakasone
someday, Mori might have even influenced Nakasone, the "deep
background" reports suggested, to make his H.R. 442 comments.

Upon meeting Mori, Reagan's position was clear and unswerving. Japan
had no right, he explained, to influence American domestic politics.
Since the Reagan administration was attempting to penetrate the
Japanese market at the time (stressing U.S. Midwest agricultural
products) and complaining about Japanese efforts to halt and even
sabotage the American effort, Mori might have asked Reagan to stop
interfering in the Japanese economy. This did not happen. Instead, he
urged the White House to change its mind on H.R. 442, and these
urgings, he insisted, were that of "one good friend to another."19

This would be the end of the direct U.S.-Japanese confrontation over
internment redress. The points had been made. But Reagan would continue
to list (privately) what he simply called "national security
concerns"
as a reason for redress legislation opposition. In reality, these
national security concerns were rooted more in pride and
emotionalism
than security policy.

Nevertheless, it was not the first time that the plight of Japanese
Americans had been confused with matters of "security."

On September 17, 1987, H.R. 442 passed the House by a vote of
243-141.
It was not a straight party vote, and the opposition to redress
included some members of Congress who, by reputation and political
credentials, were expected to champion Japanese-American rights. For
instance, one of Congress's powerful legislators, Claude Pepper (D) of
Florida, also the nation's leading spokesperson for the rights of the
elderly, thought a fight with Reagan on H.R. 442 would be
counterproductive to his pro-senior citizen legislation. Although a
Democrat with a liberal pro-civil rights/civil liberties record, Pepper
hoped that Reagan's own status as a senior citizen and the
well-cultivated Pepper-Reagan friendship would influence the
conservative president's decision to approve liberal-leaning senior
citizen rights measures from Congress. H.R. 442 suggested a threat to
the Pepper-Reagan relationship and, despite the irony of voting against
his career as a champion of the rights of the downtrodden, Pepper voted
with the fate of his senior citizen legislation foremost in mind.20

>From the House, H.R. 442 passed to the Senate. Its new Senate
version
was numbered S.1009. This Senate measure differed little from H.R. 442,
preferring a compensation budget of $1.3 billion for an estimated
60,000 Japanese Americans. Thanks to the Alaska delegation, S.1009 also
added a rider offering $12,000 apiece and an apology to those Alaskan
Aleutian Islanders who were also relocated in World War II. A budget of
$21.4 million was set aside for the Aleutian compensation package. This
Aleutian rider only added to the Reagan administration's complaint of
Congress's "fiscal irresponsibility" in a time of government cutbacks
and proposals for a balanced budget.

Events continued to move slowly, particularly in the atmosphere of
"Irangate" and time-consuming debates over Reagan's Contras policy in
Nicaragua. Redress was an important issue, but it was never a top White
House or congressional priority. Consequently, one of the president's
staunchest congressional supporters, Representative Daniel Lungren
(R-CA), recommended a compromise to break the deadlock. Although a
member of the House, Lungren urged his Senate colleagues to write a
simple, non-binding resolution that employed "apologetic rhetoric"
and
no compensation budget. Senator Orin Hatch (R-UT) praised this
compromise, vowing to introduce legislation on behalf of the Lungren
"initiative."21

In response, the Japanese-American community moved against Lungren
in a
political offensive that won results.

The Lungren initiative coincided with California Governor George
Deukmejian's nomination of Lungren for the post of state treasurer.
Lungren was interested in the post and, for a time, no one doubted this
Reagan favorite would be confirmed. Pulling together a coalition of
Asian-American political activists, San Francisco attorney and redress
champion Donald Tamaki blocked the Lungren appointment. Tamaki's
attacks on Lungren's "race politics" worked, and it shocked Washington.

Representative Matsui, who offered advice and staff
assistance to
Tamaki's "Stop Lungren" movement, violated an unwritten California
delegation rule of congressional collegiality by aiding Tamaki.
Both
Matsui and Tamaki made it clear to the press that the Japanese-American
community "could not be taken for granted anymore" and that the "kid
gloves were off." Even though the entire Asian-American community
constituted no more than 7 percent of California's population,
it
maintained a disproportionate number of the state's university
students
and professors, scientists, engineers, and CEOs. It was time to
flex
political muscle, Tamaki argued, and he thanked non-Asian Republicans
and Democrats for recognizing the importance of full redress through
their support of the Stop Lungren effort. Indeed, public opinion across
California indicated strong support for both H.R. 442 and S.1009.
Reagan, Deukmejian, and other Republican luminaries, Tamaki argued,
should have realized that Lungren's antiredress position would lead to unfortunate
political consequences. It was unclear whether
Tamaki was,
in fact, talking about Lungren or Reagan here, but the warning to
antiredress politicians was obviously made. Deukmejian countered
that
Tamaki and his Democratic friends would use any issue to achieve
political power. The Stop Lungren movement, he proclaimed, had been "emotional
blackmail" and "gutter politics at its worst."
Few agreed,
and even The Washington Post predicted that, as the 1988 election
heated up, Reagan's opposition to redress would falter thanks to
the
new, aggressive politics of the Japanese-American effort.22

Reagan discussed this developing situation with an old friend from his
days on the National Governors Council, Thomas Kean (R), Governor of
New Jersey. Reagan told Kean that he had difficulty understanding the
"motivations" of Japanese-American redress activists and their
congressional backers. He wondered if the whole matter constituted
little more than a Democratic Party measure to embarrass his
administration in time for the 1988 election. More to the point, he
noted that over the many years since World War II, he had never
been
convinced that Japanese Americans had been "forced into internment."
Many, he believed, had gone to the camps "on their own volition."23

Kean, who disagreed with his old friend's assessment, pursued the
matter, urging East Coast redress activist and former internee,
Grant
Ujifusa, to write the president on behalf of the people of New
Jersey.
Ujifusa's mission, said Kean, was "to educate the White House." Indeed,
Ujifusa put together a powerful package of letters, petitions, and
photographs from former internees. "We did not voluntarily leave our
homes, our neighborhoods, and our work," Ujifusa wrote Reagan. "We were
ousted from our rights and our property."(FN24)

In his own personal letter to Reagan, Ujifusa resurrected an old story
about Reagan's late 1945 involvement in a military ceremony
honoring a
dead Japanese-American soldier. What happened in that ceremony soon
became an issue in the redress effort itself. After more than forty
years, the Reagan story took on quite a few versions. They varied from
Reagan being present at the military ceremony to leading it in prayer.
His exact words uttered at this ceremony also grew in eloquence and
significance as his role there became a matter of concern to anyone
interested in redress.

The most accepted version of this tale had Captain Ronald
Reagan, on
December 9, 1945, taking part in a special ceremony honoring Kazuo
Masuda, who was killed in action on the banks of the Arno River in
Italy one year earlier. Masuda had been part of the 442 Regimental
Combat Team, and the ceremony involved the posthumous awarding of the
Distinguished Service Cross.

General Joseph Stilwell, and not actor/Army Captain Ronald Reagan,
presided over the ceremony. The medal was offered to Masuda's parents,
and Stilwell had flown 3,000 miles to Santa Ana, California, for this
event. A tired Stilwell bowed to movie star and former broadcast
announcer, Ronald Reagan, to say a few words. This he did, but the
exact words were not recorded by the press corps, including the
Japanese-American reporters working for California's Pacific Citizen.
The latter was even present at the scene. Perhaps exhausted by so many
military funerals and awards ceremonies, the 1945 press appeared much
more fascinated by the flashy clothes of Louise Allbritton, the
attractive Universal movie starlet who accompanied Reagan to the
ceremony, than they were by the event itself.25 Reagan was
there
to represent the Santa Ana chapter of the American Veterans Committee.

Accompanying Ujifusa's letter to Reagan was also a powerful treatise by
June Masuda Goto, the late Kazuo Masuda's sister. She reminded
Reagan
of his "heroic words" at her brother's award ceremony in which she
remembered him saying, "Mr. and Mrs. Masuda, just as one member of the
family of Americans, speaking to another member, I want to say for what
your son Kazuo did--Thanks." Mrs. Goto urged the president to sign
redress legislation into law in the name of her brother "Kaz" and in
the name of a "young, courageous Ronald Reagan."26

It was not too long before members of Congress were talking about
Reagan's 1945 "heroism" and contrasting it to the present. Although its
true origins remained suspect, the "discovery" of the Masuda eulogy
or
speech more than assisted the redress cause. By summer 1988,
Reagan's
Masuda comments in their entirety mixed the metaphor of World War II
idealism and sentiment with the 1980s goals of his administration.

The real American is the man who calls it a fair
exchange to lay down
his life in order that American ideals may go on living. And judging by
such a test, Sgt. Masuda was a better American than any of us here
today. Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all one
color. America stands unique in the world, the only country not founded
on race, but on a way -- an ideal. Not in spite of, but because of our
polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world. That is
the American way.27

The above represented Reagan's favorite version of the speech,
or so he
later told Representative Mervyn Dymally. The congressional supporters
of redress now had the president's own words to use against him
in any
coming battle. Indeed, Dymally warned Reagan of tough times ahead in
congressional-Reagan administration relations and perhaps in a number
of legislative fields of endeavor, if the White House's opposition to
redress continued.

Dymally told Reagan that the resurrection/manufacturing of the Masuda
speech "would have him eating crow before the election was out." Going
against redress, Dymally explained to the president, was not only going
against the American people's sense of fair play, but it was also "going
against common political horse sense as well as
America's decent
image abroad."28

Simply known as "Merv" in the Reagan White House, Mervyn Dymally was a
former president of the California state senate during the days of
Governor Reagan. As a senior member of the U.S. House of
Representatives Subcommittee for Asian/Pacific Affairs and as the
director of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Dymally was an
unswerving champion of redress for the Japanese-American community.
Despite his liberal Democratic Party credentials, he remained within
Reagan's tight circle of transplanted Californians. And although their
relationship was never as strong as in the days of the California state
house, Reagan respected Dymally's no-nonsense approach to politics.
Dymally, Reagan once said of his old Democratic Party chum, "always
brought me down to earth."29

During the last year of his presidency, Reagan began to consider the
historical significance of his two terms in the White House. These
musings were not unusual to ending presidencies but, in Reagan's case,
they were not without certain political ironies. Presiding over an
America that watched the 1980s dismantling of Soviet communism, Reagan
had moved from the staunch cold warrior of 1981 to a position
reminiscent of the mediocre anticommunists he once attacked with a
vengeance. In domestic affairs, the 1981 Reagan had doubted the
objectives and motivations of environmentalists. In the spring of 1988,
he made a series of speeches in the American Midwest proclaiming the
immediate need to provide a lasting heritage to the nation's children
(i.e., a clean environment).30

Although there is no solid evidence to suggest that Reagan's 1988
reversal of opposition to redress was part of this effort to leave
what
Vice President George Bush called "a kinder, gentler America" behind,
it was in keeping with the ending days of his presidency.

But the campaign of 1988 began with the president still supporting a
firm veto position. Through a new comprehensive review of its results,
Reagan hoped to counterattack those who said the 1948 American-Japanese
Evacuation Claims Act was insufficient. Reagan's domestic policy staff
did indeed accomplish this review, finding that the act had spent $37
million (in pre-inflation dollars) to settle 26,568 claims. Perhaps
this might have been a noble effort in its day, but it might be too
late, Jack Kemp (R-NY) told the president, to convince the
American
voter of that nobility. From football star to member of Congress to
close Reagan confidant and presidential hopeful, Kemp enjoyed the
president's respect. Like Dymally, but from a raw Republican partisan
point of view, Kemp warned that the 1988 general election posed
certain
dangers to the Republicans if they stood tall against redress.
Kemp, in
what would soon be a common theme in his career, urged his Republican
colleagues to be more open to ethnic minority participation in
Republican Party politics. The support for redress, he concluded,
might
eliminate a significant ethnic vote-related "danger" to the 1988
Republican ticket.31

There was reason for White House nervousness. The Democratic Party
nominee, Michael Dukakis, also the governor of Massachusetts,
stressed
the development of an ethnic vote coalition to ensure a November 1988
victory. He even delivered his nomination speech in several languages.
The ethnic vote once represented a key component of the old Democratic
New Deal coalition, and Reagan had effectively broken apart that
coalition in the 1980 election. Certainly, the Japanese-American
community would lead a rallying cry for Dukakis, Kemp warned Reagan,
and to the detriment of many Republican candidates in many races.
In
the presidential contest, early public opinion polls usually supported
a Dukakis win over Vice President Bush. Indeed, the emotional redress
debate was bad baggage to drag into the heat of the campaign. For a
time, Reagan contemplated a compromise with Congress whereby a lower
redress compensation budget would be acceptable to his
administration.32 But the president's allies in the House
had
already tried this approach during the opening arguments over H.R. 442.
An amendment to cut the H.R. 442 budget, and with a precise
figure to
be determined later, had failed in a 237-162 vote.

A better tactic to destroy the redress legislation would be to amend it
to death while (1) exposing any Japanese government pressure to pass it
and (2) "turning" a key Japanese-American spokesperson to support the
president's opposition. White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker, a
former Tennessee senator, offered these suggestions to his former
colleagues in the Senate. Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) on the
Senate
Foreign Relations Committee offered to denounce Tokyo's interference
in
American domestic affairs, while Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) on
the
Senate Defense Appropriations Committee offered amendments to S.
1009
that would lower annual payments over a ten-year period, delete the
so-called Title III section entirely (reparations to Alaskan Aleutian
Islanders), refuse payments to former internees no longer living in the
United States, and require further "discussion" into the next
congressional year.

Grant Ujifusa, meanwhile, would be asked by White House
aides Ken
Duberstein and Alan Karnowitz to support the "delay" of the
legislation
in the interest of building a better bill after the election. From the
beginning, Senator Spark Matsunaga (D-HI), the chief sponsor of
S.1009,
correctly determined the nature of this White House counteroffensive.
He reminded the Reagan administration that a good number of the
original seventy-three cosponsors of S.1009 were Republicans and that Hawaii
would remember the president's position when his vice
president
attempted to succeed him on that first Tuesday in November 1988.33

Given the political reality and, perhaps, Reagan's own growing sense of
his place in history, the president informed his cabinet and Senate
allies that he was removing the veto threat. On August 10, 1988,
in a
special signing ceremony, Reagan wrote the Congress's full redress
legislation into law. He made no mention of his previous
opposition to
it. In fact, his comments echoed the sentiments behind both H.R. 422
and S.1009. Although brief, the legislation's required "apology
statement" from Reagan was well put. "No payment," he said, "can make
up for those three lost years. So what is most important in this bill
has less to do with property than with honor. For here we admit a
wrong. Here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice
under the law."34 Reagan closed the ceremony by repeating
his
alleged Masuda speech of December 1945, noting that the "ideal of
liberty and justice for all is STILL the American way."35

With this action, the U.S. government closed a certain chapter of the
internment and internment redress period. Whether it assuaged the pain
and concern of the Japanese-American community was a different matter.

In hindsight, the Reagan administration's opposition to redress could
be considered an irrelevant matter, for redress legislation,
eventually, became part of the Reagan record. President Reagan
recognized injustice and did something about it, demonstrating that he
could be strong on principle but flexible on policies. Consequently,
his administration should be recognized for the successful passage of
redress legislation and, to some, that is the final word on the matter.

To others, the tale is more involved and less interested in Reagan's
skill as a pragmatic politician. For years, the Reagan White House had
opposed the effort to confront one of America's saddest chapters in its
twentieth-century history. Ranging from the purely moral to matters of
constitutionality and economic justice, the redress legislation was not
an example of typical congressional lawmaking. It was the product of
forty years of quiet retreat and reflection, court cases, citizen
action, and bipartisan congressional agreement. Its historical
significance was also obvious to many, including the Japanese
government. Yet, the Reagan administration labeled it "pork," an
example of big-spending liberalism, a thorn in the side of balanced
budgets, and more beneficial to Japanese policy than to the United
States.

Reagan learned the hard way that redress legislation transcended the
usual conservative versus liberal arguments. The bipartisan support for
H.R. 442 and S.1009 proved the point. After forty years of national
discussion and analysis, Reagan still believed that many
Japanese-American families went to internment camps willingly. Indeed,
his national security objection to the legislation was misnamed, for it
was based on cultural misunderstanding, fear, and an exaggerated
assessment of the Nakasone government's objectives.

More to the point, Reagan's conclusion that there were connections
between the goals of Japanese foreign policy and American redress
legislation smacked of the same type of reasoning that, forty years
earlier, connected Japanese spies and saboteurs to the
Japanese-American community. Luckily for the redress legislation's
sponsors and supporters, Republican Party struggles and worries in the
early 1988 presidential campaign took its toll on the Reagan
opposition. Ironically, as the comfortable Bush victory over Dukakis
soon proved, the Reagan team's concerns were unfounded. In the 1940s,
the presidency had been responsible for the final internment decision.
It was unfortunate that in the 1980s, it fought so hard against its
proper redress.

FOOTNOTES

1. Quoted in June Masuda Goto to President Ronald Reagan, November 19,
1988, Box 2/Japanese American of the HU 013-22 Collection, at the
Ronald Reagan Library, Simi Valley, California (hereafter referred to
as Reagan Library).

2. See the introduction to Jerry Stanley, I Am an American: A True
Story of Japanese Internment (New York: Crown, 1996).

3. The secondary literature that goes beyond the World War II
internment tale is growing, although nearly all of it is still
written
in a certain memoir fashion by former internees and their lawyers.
See
especially Peter H. Irons, Justice at War: The Story of the
Japanese-American Internment Cases (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993); Peter H. Irons, ed., Justice Delayed: The Record of the
Japanese-American Internment Cases (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University,
1988); Donna K. Nagata, Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the
Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment (New
York: Plenum, 1993); Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston,
Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience
during and after the World War II Internment (Toronto: Bantam, 1979);
Ann Koto Hayashi, Face of the Enemy, Heart of a Patriot:
Japanese-American Internment Narratives (New York: Garland, 1995).

4. Much of that documentation (especially relating to Reagan
administration policy making vis-a-vis internment redress) was
declassified for this article.

5. For a concise review of the impact of General DeWitt's argument in
the FDR administration and its legal significance, see Peter Irons,
"Justice Long Overdue," New Perspectives 18, no. 1 (Winter/Spring
1986): 2-8. This journal is published by the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights in Washington, DC. Irons served as counsel to Fred Korematsu in
the 1980s' reopening of the 1944 Korematsu case.

6. The Korematsu, Hirabayashi, Yasui case transcripts from both the
1940s and the reopened case record of the early 1980s can be found in
Box 2/Japanese American (576683-583999) of the HU 013-22 Collection of
the Reagan Library.

9. See the "Background" reports to H.R. 442 and S.1009, James Miller,
director of the Office of Management and Budget, to Baker, November 5,
1987, Box 2/Japanese American of the HU 013-22 Collection, Reagan
Library.

10. Patel's position is neatly discussed in Irons, "Justice Long
Overdue," p. 6.

11. See the trial case file at Box 2/Japanese American (576683-583999)
of the HU 013-22 Collection, Reagan Library.

12. Floyd D. Shimomura, president of the Japanese American Citizen
League (JACL), to Reagan, plus the report, "The Japanese American
Incarceration: A Case for Redress," July 16, 1984, Box
13752/Japanese-American Reparations, Luis Acle Papers, Reagan Library.
Luis Acle was the associate director for ethnic Americans in the Reagan
administration's Office of Public Liaison. His papers include some
information on 1980s redress issues.

13. "Issue Paper: Japanese-American Internment," Office of Policy
Development, February 8, 1985; S. Stephen Nakashima to Reagan,
October
7, 1987, Boxes 071-079/CO 078-294010 and 071-079/CO 78 522340 of the
Countries Collection, Reagan Library. Nakashima was a senior official
in the 1960s Reagan for Governor campaigns and president-elect for the
Japanese-American Republican Committee for the State of California
during the 1980s. He was very good at analyzing Reagan's redress
position and discussing it with him.

16. Lee L. Verstandig, special assistant to the president for
intergovernmental affairs, to Senator John T. Doolittle (California
State Senate), January 3, 1984; Joseph Wright to Miller and Baker,
November 5, 1987; John R. Bolton, assistant attorney general, to
Representative Claude Pepper, chair, U.S. House of Representatives
Rules Committee, September 14, 1987, Box 3/ND016-194015 of the ND 016
Collection, Box 2/Japanese American (576682) of the HU 013-22
Collection, Box 071-079/CO 078-533350 of the Countries Collection,
Reagan Library.

17. For the U.S.-Japan relations aspects of the redress issue, see the
series of memos and reports, particularly in reference to U.S.-Japan
policy discussions with Yoshiro Mori, the Nakasone government's
minister of education, dated from August 20, 1984, to September 12,
1984, in James K. Coyne, special assistant to the president, Private
Sector Initiatives, to Frederick J. Ryan, presidential appointments and
scheduling, and Reagan. See also T. H. Bell, Department of Education,
to Craig Fuller, August 3, 1984; "National Security Council Decision
Directive on United States-Japan Relations, #62," October 25, 1982;
"Preparatory Process for the Visit of Prime Minister Nakasone and the
U.S.-Japan Follow-Up Effort: National Security Council Directive,
#151," December 10, 1984; "U.S.-Japan Trade Policy Relations, National
Security Council Directive, #154," December 10, 1984; Box 071-079/CO
078-Japan of the Countries Collection and Box 1 of the Collection of
National Security Council Decision Directives, Numbers 1-250, Reagan
Library.

23. Reagan to Kean and Kean to Reagan, Baker, and Deputy Chief of
StaffKen Duberstein, February 6, 1988, Box 2/Japanese American
(576683-583999) of the HU 013-22 Collection, Reagan Library.

24. Ujifusa to Kean, November 24, 1987. The Reagan correspondence is
noted here.

25. "Film Actor," Pacific Citizen, December 15, 1945, Box 2/Japanese
American (576683-583999) of the HU 013-22 Collection, Reagan Library.
Although this article has no byline, its authors, most likely, are John
Kitasako or Bill Hosokawa of the Pacific Citizen.

26. June Masuda Goto to Reagan, November 19, 1987, Box 2/Japanese
American (576683-58399) of the HU 013-22 Collection, Reagan Library.

27. Reagan administration documentation submitted to Congress in
reference to the "Signing Ceremony for Japanese Internment Legislation,
Wednesday, August 10, 1988," August 9, 1988, Box 2/Japanese American
(576682) of the HU 013-22 Collection, Reagan Library.

30. Office of Communications-White House to Senior White House Staff:
"The President's Principle Achievements in 1988," December 1988, Box 1
of the papers of Beryl W. Sprinkle, Reagan Library. This report
stressed Reagan's "growth" as America's chief executive, accenting his
final year in office. Sprinkle was chair of Reagan's Council of
Economic Advisors from 1985 to 1989.